When Carolina Garcia officially takes over as editor of the Daily News in two weeks she faces a familiar situation in different surroundings. Familiar because like the Daily News, her previous paper, the Monterey County Herald, is owned by MediaNews and that means a shrinking news hole and staffing cuts. It’s different, well, because this is the San Fernando Valley. There’s no mistaking Lake Balboa for the Pacific Ocean and while many nice golf courses are found from Burbank to Westlake Village none can be mistaken for Pebble Beach. Two visits to the Valley gave Garcia a taste of what she can expect after April 28. To get up to speed on the issues and the personalities involved, she intends to rely on the experience and knowledge of the news staff although there are fewer of those around than there were two months ago. “I look to get immersed and I’d like to get to know the community,” Garcia said. Immersion is just what Garcia will need to get to know the politics and the players, said Jill Banks Barad, president of the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils. <!– Carolina Garcia –> Carolina Garcia After all, her predecessor certainly did, Barad said. That would be Ron Kaye, who gave 23 years to the Daily News, the last two-and-a-half as editor. The official story is that Kaye resigned April 4; the reason is open to interpretation, coming as it did five weeks after cuts eliminated 22 newsroom positions through layoffs and buyouts. Did he say “enough is enough” when ordered to pare down an already depleted staff, knocking heads with those at MediaNews who understand profit margins better than journalism? “He finally got canned by the powers that be,” was how staffer Julie Scott put it in her Bargain Hunter blog. While described as a bombastic, gruff crusader, Kaye showed a soft side, becoming tearful on the day in February when he addressed staffers about job cuts. “All good things in life come to an end sooner or later, even my love affair with the Daily News,” Kaye wrote in an e-mail on the day he left. “What will always be with me is my love and respect for all of you.” To make a comparison between Kaye’s decades of experience with the blank slate of Garcia’s is unfair, said Brendan Huffman, president of the Valley Industry & Commerce Association. After all, Kaye may not have known much about the city when he went to work at the late Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. “There is a learning curve,” Huffman said. “We are excited to meet [Garcia] and show her the business side of the Valley.” There are others waiting to meet Garcia as well. She can expect invitations from Bruce Ackerman at the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, and from Barad, whose group last summer hosted a visit from Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller. What they want to hear is that Garcia won’t make many changes in how the Daily News covers the Valley. As managing editor and, later, editor Kaye positioned the paper as the Valley’s paper. During the secession movement of the late 1990’s the coverage in the Daily News drew criticism of bias in favoring those advocating splitting from Los Angeles. Kaye strongly believed in citizen democracy, Barad said, and his support of the grass-roots movements energized the VANC. “Even with the staff cuts, it is now, and continues to be [the Valley’s paper],” Barad said. Diversity Letting staff go is not unfamiliar to Garcia, who has seen two rounds of layoffs at the Herald since becoming part of MediaNews in 2006. The paper also experienced downsizing in content and size with the elimination of a Sunday opinion section and the consolidation of sports and business sections. The turmoil in the newspaper industry in general, caused by shrinking circulation, loss of advertising revenue and competition from more immediate forms of media, poses a challenge to achieving a newsroom reflective of the community it serves. Yet it is a challenge that Garcia is ready to take up. When she started at the Herald in 2003, the editorial staff was 11 percent ethic minorities. That number grew to a high of 33 percent until the cutbacks. Growing up in Texas, Garcia did not speak English when she started school. She later participated in civil rights marches in the Chicano movement. Once settled in the Valley, she looks forward to learning and understanding the dynamics of the Latino community. “I have found it invigorating to make change, to take creative risks, and to hire a diverse staff to better reflect our values,” Garcia wrote in 2004 for the American Society Newspaper Editors for which served as diversity director. Two years ago the Daily News joined the Parity Project of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to increase minorities on the editorial staff. In its first year the paper formed an advisory committee of educators, students, business people, media relations professionals and retirees and hired an intern it had found through a program with the California Chicano News Media Association. Well-Respected With the Herald, Garcia was visible in the business community and intends to continue that practice in the Valley. Garcia regularly attended lunches and dinners sponsored by the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce and made it a point to introduce her new reporters, said Brad Smith, marketing and communications director for the chamber, who got to know Garcia when working in retail advertising at the Herald. Garcia is personable, well respected and will be missed, Smith said. Until Garcia takes over the editor duties later in the month, managing editor Melissa Lalum will be overseeing the Daily News newsroom. Then the learning begins and Garcia will do that by finding leadership programs and other issue-oriented classes like ones she took in Monterey. “I am looking for things like that; groups and organization that offer insight and training, something a little bit formal so it’s not just for the editor of the paper,” Garcia said. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] .